A Victory for the Okefenokee

In June, a six-year battle came to an end to prevent the Georgia Environmental Protection Division from approving surface mining permits for Twin Pines Minerals of Alabama to mine for titanium sands on the border of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in south Georgia. The Conservation Fund, a national nonprofit land trust, backed by several private philanthropies, purchased the property on the southeastern edge of the Okefenokee swamp, thereby ending the proposed mine that scientists and conservation advocates warned could alter and permanently harm the Okefenokee’s hydrology and the wildlife that depend on it.

At 438,000 acres, the Okefenokee Swamp is a national Wilderness Area, North America’s largest blackwater swamp, and the largest National Wildlife Refuge east of the Mississippi. When the proposed mine was announced, it raised the specter of a similar threat from the 1990s, when Dupont attempted to establish a mine on the same geologic feature, Trail Ridge, that holds the swamp in place. That earlier project was abandoned after intense pushback from conservationists and then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt.

World-renowned for its biological diversity, the refuge supports a vast labyrinth of cypress forests, pine islands, lily ponds, and blackwater channels, containing thousands of species.

After the proposed Twin Pines project was announced, NPCA became a founding member of the Okefenokee Protection Alliance (OPA), a coalition of more than 40 local, state, and national organizations seeking the permanent protection of the swamp. Over the intervening years, OPA advocacy helped generate more than 250,000 comments to both the Army Corps of Engineers and the state of Georgia, along with at least 19 local government resolutions against the mine, making this the most opposed environmental permit application in Georgia history. These efforts helped lay the groundwork for the acquisition deal, in which The Conservation Fund purchased the nearly 600-acre “demonstration mine” along with all of Twin Pines’ surrounding land holdings, totaling approximately 8,000 acres and including both surface and mineral rights, for about $60 million.

Even though the Okefenokee is part of the national wildlife refuge system and not a national park unit, NPCA recognized the necessity of joining the effort to help stop this threat to what has been designated a Wetland of International Importance. World-renowned for its biological diversity, the refuge supports a vast labyrinth of cypress forests, pine islands, lily ponds, and blackwater channels, containing thousands of species, including the imperiled wood stork, eastern indigo snake, gopher tortoise, and red-cockaded woodpecker. The Swamp’s American alligator population is estimated at 15,000. The Okefenokee is also the source of the Suwannee and St. Marys rivers, two largely unspoiled waterways vital to Atlantic and shortnose sturgeons and other species in regional decline.

wood storks at Okefenokee

Wood storks in the skies above the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. 

Dan Chapman/USFWS

While the immediate threat has been defeated, the possibility of Trail Ridge being mined by other corporate landowners remains. NPCA continues to collaborate with our partners to advance work that will ensure a different future for the greater Okefenokee region.

These efforts include:

1. Supporting implementation of Georgia’s State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) and building landscape connectivity between the Okefenokee and Florida Wildlife Corridor network to the south and the Altamaha River Corridor to the north,

2. Encouraging alternative economic development that builds on the region’s natural and cultural assets, such as the Okefenokee Experience, a tri-county ecotourism initiative to establish a Natural History and Ecology Interpretive Center, a Cultural History Museum and a Dark Sky Observatory at dispersed locations around the Swamp, and

3. Promoting the nomination of the Okefenokee as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is expected to be considered by the international World Heritage Committee sometime in 2026.